Far be it from me to crap on this movie, ‘Dark Reality’, when the director of the movie has already gone so far as to do it for me. Christopher Hutson is already on record commenting on ‘how crappy’ he thinks his movie is and how it was simply shot as an experimental piece (a failed one at that). Hutson and his crew even state that they were ‘Shocked’ that someone actually picked up this garbage for distribution. Now assuming that this is true, that the director, his actors and his crew weren’t really trying to make a decent a movie but simply had a spare camcorder, some blank tapes, a working 60-watt Sylvania light bulb, and also were lucky enough to find some women who didn’t mind laying on dirty floors topless then Christopher Hutson, you are off the hook. The object of my hostility, and I would imagine anyone else who stumbles upon the unfortunate creation that is ‘Dark Reality’, must focus their vitriol in the direction of the company that picked this mess up, and that would be First Look International.

Carey (Alisha Seaton) and her buds are sitting around a little bistro shooting the fat, as characters in movies like this tend to do, discussing things that we really don’t care about hearing, but somewhere in this conversation we learn that Carey is running off to Europe to ‘find herself’ or something. Since this is Carey’s last night in the USA the ladies leave the bistro and head to a club, which is actually a table in someone’s house with a flashing light hitting the wall behind the table (hey, it’s low budget). After the ladies finish ‘tearing up the town’ it’s time to head on home. Carey and her little sister stay up talking about something no one cares to hear anything about, but she does offer to drive Carey to airport. Carey refuses and says she has a cab coming at the crack of dawn and will use that method of transpo. Now Carey would have chosen that ride if she had known that somewhere in Los Angeles (I guess) someone is

snatching women off the street and doing heaven only knows what with them. Carey’s cab is late, but Death is right on time as somebody apparently snatches up the girl with the purpose of doing heaven only knows what to her.

Next time we see Carey she is in a dingy basement, chained to a wall and getting injections of green fluid. As Carey fades in and out of consciousness she sees her masked captors and the occasional dead naked girl. Soon she is joined by other chained women who sit around in the dark dirty basement and stress about being thirsty and hungry and who their prom dates were. This goes on for about an hour until the credits roll with no resolution, or at least as far as I could tell.

Obviously I’m no film distribution executive so I can only speculate as to what First Look International saw in this to rate it sitting on Blockbuster shelves across America. Is it simply the fact that it’s a finished film? Because if that’s the case you give me a month, a camcorder, and a pack of four GE light bulbs I’ll have 5 movies finished for at the end of those thirty days. Or maybe it’s the fact that there were dirty naked chicks lying on the ratty basement floor? That may be a tall issue for me to pull of for my five in thirty plan. I’m sure I could convince some actresses to get nekkid and stuff, but getting them to lie on a dirty floor is gonna be tough, and at least to that effect, Christopher Hutson should be congratulated.

Making it through the end of ‘Dark Reality’ will truly be a test of one’s intestinal fortitude. There is virtually no action and as such most of the movie has to be carried by the actresses chained up in the basement, and their acting prowess is limited at best. The story is virtually non-existent as the only people who seem to know what’s happening is the director and his crew. Most everything is shot in EXTREMELY low light, which I assume was done to add to the creepiness of the atmosphere, but since there was no atmospheric creepiness to be found and absolutely no horror in this horror movie, the low light only served to irritate, make it difficult to see the nothing that was happening on screen, and force you to focus your ears on the actresses in the film who can’t act.

Christopher Hutson, you are off the hot seat forever to be replaced by whichever executive of acquisitions at First Look International who thought it was a good idea to give this film worldwide distribution. For Shame!